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Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg, 

APRIL 19, 1865, 



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AN ADDBESS BY THE BASTOB* 

Rev. S. S. MITCHELL. 

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HARRI SB U RG : 

SINGERLY & MYERS. PRINTERS. 

1865. 



Washington, D. C, April 15, 1865. 
Major General Dix: 

Abraham Lincoln died this morning, at twenty-two minutes past seven 

o'clock. 

E. M. STANTON, 

Secretary of War. 



Department of State, ■» 

Washington, Z>. C, April IT, 1865. J 
To the People op the United Status: 

The undersigned is directed to announce that the funeral ceremonies 
of the lamented Chief Magistrate will take place at the Executive Mansion, 
in this city, at 12 o'clock noon, on Wednesday, the 19th inst. The various 
religious denominations, throughout the country, are invited to meet in 
their respective places of worship, at that hour, for the purpose of solemn- 
izing this occasion with appropriate ceremonies. 

(Signed) W. HUNTER, 

Acting Secretary of State, 



Presbyterian Church, -» 
Harrisburg, Pa., April 19, 18C5. / 
Rev. S. S. Mitchell, Pastor: 

Dear Sir: The undersigned members of your congregation, believing 
that the address delivered by you to-day, during the services held in this 
Church, as part of the National Funeral of Abraham Lincoln, late President 
of the United States, gives expression in a chaste and appropriate form, 
to the views and feelings not only of those who listened to its delivery, 
but of many others, all of whom would be pleased to possess it in a more 
enduring form, respectfully request you to furnish us a copy for publica- 
tion. 

Respectfully and Truly Yours, 

U. H. MYERS, J. W. SIMONTON, 

F. WYETH, B. F. ETTER, 

J. F. SEILER, H. A. THOMPSON, 

H. M. GRAYDON, WM. KNOCHE, 

A. BURNETT, S. T. CHARLTON, 

H. UHLER, WM. WILLIS, 

ALEX. HAMILTON, J. McCORMICK, Jr. 
W. W. HAYS, 



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Christian Citizens: 

This is a National funeral. We are here at this time 
to participate, with twenty millions of people, in the ob- 
sequies of their Chief. To-day, even .at this hour, the 
Republic buries Abraham Lincoln ! The mourners are 
the friends of the Nation, the champions of freedom and 
the rights of man throughout the world — the corpse is 
that of our good, our honest, and our beloved President. 

There is weeping to-day wherever the sad news has 
sped, and patriotic hearts overflow at this hour with a sud- 
den and a measureless grief. In the day of our victory 
and our joy, God has laid his hand upon us, and there 
is lamentation throughout the land — the Republic weep- 
ing for a faithful son, and refusing to be comforted because 
he is not. In the Capital City of our Nation there is 
to be seen, at this hour, a pageant of woe, the spectacle 
of a mighty sorrow, which casts its dark shadow of afflic- 
tion from the Potomac to the Oregon, and underneath 
which strong hearts are bursting with an indignant grief 
while they exclaim, "Great God! Is it true] Can it 
really be so?' And we, who are gathered here to-day, 
can only say, " Yes ! God has willed it — it is true." 

There, in the inactivity of death, sleeps the brain, which, 
but a few short days ago, was wracked and fevered with 



8 

the august care of a nation — which thought, and planned, 
and purposed, (O ! with how much faithfulness,) for you 
and me, and the Republic which we love. There, in the 
deep aud untroubled rest of the last sleep, lies the face, 
from which so much of kindliness and greatness of soul 
ever beamed, and upon which are now the carved and 
moveless furrows of four years of oppressive care and faith- 
ful service. There in the Capital City, which bears the 
name of the Father, lies cold in death the prostrate form 
of him who shall hereafter be known — shall I not say it — 
as the Preserver of his Country — the man, who, called 
to the kingdom in troublous times, was faithful found 
among the faithless, and who, through four long years of 
storm, of darkness and of disaster, never lost his faith, or 
quit the deck. 

Weep, O Republic, for your faithful dead ! Weave 
cypress wreaths around your brow to-day, O resuscitated 
and preserved Nation ! Build him a monument to-day 
broad as the basis of your vindicated nationality, and high 
as the summit of your present hopes, and upon it write, 
"Honest Abraham Lincoln, iclio loved and served Ids Conn- 
try." 

Not for his own untarnished fame, not for his future 
memory and renown, has he fallen too soon. But too 
soon, alas ! for us, who were just beginning to feel how 
much we owed to his unswerving fidelity, his steadfast 
faith and patriotic zeal. Too soon, alas ! for those, who, 
in the hour of their humiliation and righteous disaster, 



9 

have lost their most magnanimous enemy and their most 
forgiving friend ; too soon, alas ! foi the Nation, which 
was about to rise in the grandeur of its re-united strength, 
and place upon his brow the diadem of " faithful servant;" 
too soon, alas! for us all, who needed, so much at this 
hour, his steady hand to do the bidding of his judicious 
mind and kindly heart, and garner up in the store-house 
of our future, the fruits of the Nation's struggle, the Na- 
tion's tribulation, and the Nation's blood. 

Yet, God has done it, and we are still. As the righteous 
and all-wise Ruler of the Universe passes by us to-day in 
the storm-cloud of this terrible judgment, we would cover 
our face, while we exclaim — "It is the Lord, and His 
name is secret." 

We are here, Christian citizens, to mourn, but not 
to murmur. We are here to weep, but not to despair of 
the Republic ; here to drop tears over the grave which 
the Nation shall dig to-day, but to see those tears trans- 
figured into sacrificial drops, which shall purge away our 
Nation's sins, which shall water with healthful and life- 
giving influences, the seeds of National unity and pros- 
perity, which that now relaxed and nerveless arm has 
scattered, and bring germination and life and growth to a 
nobler, deeper and truer love for our country. 

We give up Abraham Lincoln to-day as a man who 
has done his work. 

God prepared an honest man for a terrible crisis — a cri- 
sis in the history of our Republic and the world — and He 
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10 

gave that man to us when the crisis came. From the far 
west He brought him, and from the humble walks of 
life, and placed him upon the summit of an influence no- 
bler than that of kings, and put within his hands a scep- 
tre bigger with the destinies of men than emperor has 
often wielded. 

In darker days than this one He preserved him. Dur- 
ing the long night of our country's danger and shame He 
spared him, and now, just as the first aslant rays of com- 
ing peace begin to lighten our national horizon, He with- 
drew the shield of His protection, and the dagger of the 
assassin is the voice which tells us that the sixteenth 
President of the United States has done his work. 

Let us believe to-day, Christian citizens, that the God 
of our Fathers, who gave them Washington, gave us Lin- 
coln. Let us also believe that He re-called him none too 
soon. There is some great national "needs be." This 
shall yet be seen by those of us who shall search for it. 

The sun of God's providence rising with healing beams 
upon oui- afflicted Nation, will yet tell us why our Leader 
was now stricken down. Surely it must be for our good. 
Surely our God is not now to dash to the ground our 
highest and purest hopes — to blast, as in a moment, the 
noblest fruits of the Nation's tears and the Nation's blood. 
No ! we will not — we cannot believe it. No ! the work 
had reached the stage when another hand might hold 
our National standard. The time had come when the 
Nation must make another sacrifice That sacrifice has 



11 

now been made. That new hand now grasps the Stars 
and Stripes. God is in all, God is over all — all is well. 

Freedom is proclaimed throughout the land — the Union 
is saved — Abraham Lincoln's work is done. The scenery 
in the great providential drama now changes, and God 
gives us another agent to accomplish his will for the Na- 
tion. He, even the God of our Fathers, is with their chil- 
dren, therefore will we not fear. 

We give up Abraham Lincoln also, to-day, as a sac- 
rifice to his Country. All noble life is self-sacrifice. 
The only question is, whether the life shall be given by 
inches, or at once. The law of progress in this world 
is, labor, suffering, death. " Except a corn of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, 
it bringeth forth much fruit." Martyrs die for the Church, 
patriots die for the Nation — the law is the same in both. 

The fruit of hope and peace which now begins to ripen 
in, and for our Nation, has been watered by the life blood 
of two hundred and fifty thousand patriot souls. Yes ! 
"perfect through suffering" — "blessings and victory 
through sacrifice and death," God's own Son has proclaimed 
and consecrated these principles, and henceforward and 
forever they are paths of development, in which both na- 
tions and individuals must walk. 

Thus through the great sacrifice are its human types both 
necessitated and accepted. During the last four years we 
have laid many a precious victim upon the altar of Union, 




12 

Liberty, and a safe future, and to-day we immolate the 
last and most precious. 

Accept it, O God, and for the sake of thy Son, gi?e us 
peace in our day. Accept it, and give us as its fruits, a 
restored, re-united and a purified Republic. Accept it, 
and send our nation down along the ages, the peerless 
embodiment of civil and religious liberty ; the home of 
the free, the refuge for the oppressed, the herald of thy 
Son and his religion to all nations, and through all time. 
Accept it, and make us the benefactors of a grateful pos- 
terity — the builders of a national temple, upon whose al- 
tars unborn millions shall sacrifice the sacrifice of thanks- 
giving, and fill its walls with praise. Accept it, and lay 
for us the foundation of our national unity and peace, so 
deep and so broad, that it shall remain unmoved until the 
second coming of thy Son. Accept this, our sacrifice, O 
God, and make us that "happy people, whose God is the 
Lord" — that people, which, underneath the streaming- 
light of thy renewed benediction, shall stand out before 
the nations of the earth, "fair as the moon, clear as the 
sun, and terrible as an army with banners." 

Thus, Christian citizens, do we give up the beloved 
Chief Magistrate of our Nation to-day. Thankful to God 
who raised him up ; thankful to that Providence which 
guarded him so long ; as one who has done his work ; as 
a holocaust, even a sweet smelling sacrifice upon the altar 
of his country, do we, at this hour, bury Abraham Lin- 
coln. 



13 

And here, by the side of his grave, let our sorrow con- 
secrate within us all a spirit of more ardent, more devoted 
and more holy patriotism. "Our country," — let it mean 
more to us to-day than it has ever done before. It is the 
land which God has given us. It is our home. It is the 
mother of us all. God gave it its birth through toil, 
through suffering and through blood. For its preserva- 
tion He has now accepted the lives of a quarter of a mil- 
lion of its sons, and to-day, before our eyes, He re-conse- 
crates it by a new and a noble sacrifice. O, where is the 
man whose heart cannot burn, and whose eyes cannot 
moisten, before the mourning flag of his country to-day X 
Where is the patriot who is not willing, at this hour, to 
come up again to the altar of his country, and, lifting his 
right hand to Heaven, take anew that solemn oath of 
Christian allegiance, "If I forget thee, America, may my 
right hand forget her canning ; if I do not remember tliee, 
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth''' 

God puts into your hands to-day Christian citizens, the 
sacred trust of this great Republic, He gives into your 
keeping anew to-day, the ark of civil and religious lib- 
erty. He commits to you, as your most sacred responsi- 
bility, this grand experiment, this noble embodiment of 
Republican institutions. His providence to-day holds up 
before you the land for which your fathers died, and 
which is now dripping fresh with the sacrificial blood of 
your brothers and your Chief, and asks you if you will 
not receive, and defend, and preserve, and transmit to the 



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needy millions of the future, the priceless legacy, the 
precious hope, and the unfathomed benediction of the 
A merican Republic. Let e very heart pulsate with a ho- 
lier love for Country. Let every soul be burdened with 
the prayer, " God of our Fathers, bless America." Let 
every lip invoke benedictions. From every son and heir 
of the Republic, let there be breathed the words, "0, thou 
be oved land ! bound together by so many bonds of brother- 
hood, rind common interest, and peril, live forever, one and 
undivided. 

And now turning from our Country to him, from whose 
fallen form, we take, with prayers and vows and tears, the 
standard of our Nation — what shall I say. 

Friend of the Republic — farewell! Rest within the 
inner sanctuary of a Nation's gratitude ! Thou neeclst not 
desire a more sacred mausoleum. " Faithful servant " 
is the verdict which twenty millions of thy countrymen 
to-day pronounce over thy tomb. '■'•Faithful servant" are 
the words with which a weeping Nation to-day speaks thy 
praises. 

Thou hast served the Republic. Thy work is done. 
Thou wast faithful, noble, true. Thou didst stand in thy 
lot. The tears, which we this day shed over thy grave, 
shall purify a nobler patriotism for America. Our chil- 
dren will bless thee. Thy memory shall be the inheri- 
tance of thankful and succeeding generations. The fu- 
ture hi:>tory of the Republic will be the record of thy deeds, 
the proclamation of thy praise. 



15 

Farewell ! modest, faithful, land-hearted, lionest Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Upon each of our hearts to-day we write thy epitaph : 
"With faith in God lie loved his Country, and was true to 
the people." Nobler praise than this thou couldst not de- 
sire, less than this thou shalt never receive. Servant of 
the Republic, true friend of thy country -men — again fare- 
well! 




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